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A candid, in-depth look into the most important stories in electronics hardware and manufacturing hosted by PRG experts Michael Keer and Wayne Miller.
Wayne (00:13)
Hello, welcome to the podcast. Today we're joined by Michael Keir, founder and managing partner of the Product Realization Group, a consulting firm that has helped startups and Fortune 500 companies successfully navigate the complex journey from product concept to mass production. Throughout his career, Michael has worked with hundreds of technology companies across industries, including consumer,
Wayne (00:41)
Medical devices, robotics, industrial systems, renewable energy, and advanced manufacturing. Through those experiences, he's observed why some products successfully scale into thriving businesses while others fail despite having great technology. Michael's latest book, Agile Hardware Product Realization: Navigating the Journey from Concept to Scale in the Age of AI, provides a practical framework for bringing hardware products to market faster, with less risk, and greater confidence.
Wayne (01:11)
This book combines agile development principles, product management, manufacturing readiness, supply chain strategy, quality systems, and the emerging role of artificial intelligence into a comprehensive roadmap for hardware innovation. Today we'll discuss the evolution of agile hardware development lessons learned from decades of product realization experience, how AI is transforming product development, and what companies must do to successfully move from concept to scale. Michael!
Wayne (01:41)
Welcome to the podcast.
Michael (01:44)
Thank you, Wayne. It's a a pleasure to be here.
Wayne (01:47)
Excellent. Well, why don't we just get started? Today I'm gonna let Michael do more of the talking, even though most of the podcasts, I do most of the talking. So hopefully you'll be able to help everyone understand kind of what inspired you to write the book, etc. So that's question one. You know, what inspired you to write agile hardware product realization and what problem in the hardware industry were you trying to solve?
Michael (02:14)
Well, if if you look at my history, which was coming into Silicon Valley at a few different high-tech startups, one one in telecom, one in motocontrol systems. Through those OEM experiences I saw pretty big mistakes being made that were resulting in products that were more expensive and harder to build. And then following that I ended up at a contract manufacturer pyramid where I saw many, many
Michael (02:43)
Companies really struggling holistically with all the things needed to get a product from the laboratory to full-scale volume manufacturing. And I was responsible for school full-scale volume manufacturing. And as a result, it was not easy for me to build products. And I was continually struggling with clients to get proper documentation, feeding back that they needed to meet proper regulatory requirements.
Michael (03:11)
We couldn't buy parts, et cetera. And that was eight years of of living that really gave me the the motivation to to start product realization group and then and then follow that based on the experiences since I started the group, really to share some of the knowledge that that I have as well as many other experts in the field to try and help make that navigation from, let's say, prototype to scale easier.
Michael (03:41)
and less risky and and a little bit with the lens of the contract manufacturer my word, it is easier to build these products at the end of the day because things have been d done right the first time.
Wayne (03:53)
Well, you know, it's interesting because obviously we've been working together for the last several years and you know, we've worked on several products together. So I'm very familiar with the last couple of years what we've been up to, but how do you think things have evolved from, you know, kind of our current experiences with how they used to be? Have things changed quite a bit in kind of the problems that the hardware industry is seeing?
Michael (04:23)
I I think the problems for the most part with hardware have been around a while. I I think that you know, the big shift that I saw in my career was early days, everything was under one roof. So you could I was in manufacturing way back in the day and marketing was was in the same building and engineering was in the same building. And if there was an issue in manufacturing, it was easy to just
Michael (04:49)
walk across the hall and drag a an engineer and say, Hey, I can't build this because and show And it it's really over the last thirty plus years gotten very bifurcated with the introduction of China as a major manufacturing powerhouse and and other Asian parts. And and now it's much more what I see especially in Silicon Valley is companies focusing on technology and product development and really outsourcing
Michael (05:18)
the the heavy lifting on the manufacturing side, for the most part offshore. There is still obviously onshore manufacturing and and that does seem to be accelerating in certain areas, but there's still a huge amount of manufacturing going offshore. So I I think that's really been the major, you know, macro shift was was how supply chains really went from being pretty well tightly controlled in the US to to dispersed around the globe.
Wayne (05:44)
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, definitely seeing the same kind of thing. Okay, next question. So this is version 3.0 of the book. What are the biggest differences between the first and current edition?
Michael (05:57)
Yeah, there's been a couple major changes. I I I started the the version three thinking I would just add a few snippets about AI and and you know digging into the research, what I found was AI it really is having a major shift in a lot of different areas, you know, ranging from early stage market analysis to prototype development through looking at field failures and repair. So
Michael (06:26)
How that AI integrates into the whole process was the primary driver. But when I got into the rewriting of the book, I also found like there there was sections like product management and technical program management that were really pretty lightly covered in the first version. So it was a great opportunity not just to add all all the aspects of AI in there, but also to restructure it and and beef up areas that
Michael (06:53)
were were a little bit lighter in the first version. So I'm I'm really excited about this version.
Wayne (06:58)
Excellent. Yeah. Artificial intelligence is such an interesting space right now. You know, there's you know
Wayne (07:05)
On the on one hand, you know, everybody wants to kind of get artificial intelligence, you know, into their mind share and into their workflow and figure out how to use it to do things. At the same time, I'm seeing like a lot of people will come up with product development plans that are generated by artificial intelligence and don't really understand what they're doing. So it's an interesting dichotomy there. It'll be interesting to hear more from you about what your thoughts are on, you know, kind of the best.
Wayne (07:35)
practices that can happen in with artificial intelligence. What are what are some of the things that you see the best in most impact in?
Michael (07:40)
Yeah, for sure.
Michael (07:45)
For sure. Well I yeah, my my comment on AI, you know, today is AI is the worst it will ever be today. So it's it's only getting better as we go forward.
Wayne (07:58)
Nice. Back to the book. question number three. So why do so many hardware startups and product development efforts fail, even when the underlying technology is strong?
Michael (08:11)
Yeah, I think I think you've teased a little bit the answer as part of the question. So a lot of companies that I've worked in and worked with when I was in the manufacturing world were very technology heavy. So they had IP in optics or they had IP in motor control systems or or what you know, whatever other amazing technologies, you know, come out of Silicon Valley. But
Michael (08:34)
Having amazing technology and translating that technology into a a a scalable volume product are really they're they're just quite different things. And I think a lot of technologists, and I've heard this way too many times, think of manufacturing a little bit as an afterthought. It's like, well, how hard can it be? And you know, the technology it's all about the technology and that that that just isn't the case, especially when you get into higher volume products and consumer products and and and and even high-tech products that are complex.
Michael (09:04)
Getting the manufacturing right really is critical if you're gonna have a sustainable and profitable business. And I I think a lot of technology based founders and marketing based companies really don't fully understand the the negative impacts if they get the manufacturing side wrong. And there and there's some great examples of companies like like Apple or Tesla that that really do know how to get it right and they and they've got amazing hardware products as a result of that. So
Michael (09:32)
It's been interesting to be in the Valley to see both sides kind of showing up, but there there's still a lot i i in my experience of companies that are very heavy on the technology and they just don't have a lot of knowledge or expertise on how to take that technology and commercialize it into into full scale volume.
Wayne (09:53)
Well one of the things that I've observed significantly, you know, for the fifteen years before I was doing consulting with PRG, I was, you know, running engineering or operations or both for, you know, Silicon Valley tech companies and most of them were venture funded, you know, startups. And there were a lot of failures in there, sadly. And you know, it was interesting because I really thought that we had great products and
Wayne (10:23)
Every case. I I can't think of one case where we didn't have great technology, even great products that we had engineered and gotten built up. But you know, there's a lot of things that I learned in terms of, you know, the business models and how, you know, kind of ongoing support or you know, dealing with kind of on-site kind of
Wayne (10:45)
support requirements, things like that that you know just have a big impact in, you know, your company spend. And if you're not highly profitable, then you know you start running out of money. And it's a real challenge to build a business that's sustainable. and I think that there's just a lot of things that you have to do. And startups really struggle with this because they're trying to move so fast and they're trying to you know make so much progress and deploy at customer sites.
Wayne (11:15)
But when you start doing that at scale and you're losing money, then you start burning cash and you can run out of money and that's a challenge obviously.
Michael (11:26)
Yeah, and that and that ties really to the intent of the book, which is how you how do you identify and mitigate these risks, many of which you said you you know you encountered, and how do you do that in a way where you mitigate the risk before it escalates into really large cost overruns or product recalls or things that are gonna be really, really detrimental to the to the success of the business.
Wayne (11:50)
Yeah. And of course right now we're working with a lot of different companies and you know you can kind of see what they're trying to do and what their you know their focus is. And you know, obviously we try to help them and we try to guide them, but there's such a push to, you know, kind of deploy, sell, you know, et cetera. So it's it's a challenge and there's a balancing act that has to happen.
Michael (12:18)
Totally agree. Yeah. Yeah, and I I think part of the part of that challenge has to do with the the V C funding model where there's a there's a big push for speed, which which is great, but speed in hardware i in my experience is different than software. So if you if you go fast in hardware things tend to break.
Wayne (12:21)
All right.
Michael (12:41)
If you go fast and software you can always fix it, right? You can release more code. So that's the that's the trick in hardware. How do you how do get things right before you really get into scale?
Wayne (12:51)
Yeah, well one of the things that Elon Musk is has been successful at is you know kind of iterating. and of course it costs a lot of money to do that iteration, whether you're iterating with rockets or electric vehicles or whatever. but you know, basically he created a climate where, you know, people were designing things and
Wayne (13:15)
you know, deploying them and testing them and then if there were failures, modifying them, or even if they weren't failures, making them better, et cetera. And I think that's, you know, a very agile kind of way to work. and not everyone's been successful doing that, obviously.
Michael (13:35)
Right. And and he's been very successful at it. Other companies in the valley have also been very successful if if you look back at the early days of Intel and how they iterated on the chips. But it's not easy, and I think a lot of companies underestimate how how how difficult some of these things are and they they get caught up in one risk point or another and and it ends up really being a negative impact on the on the business.
Wayne (14:04)
For sure. Okay, another question. What is agile hardware product realization? And how does it differ from both traditional waterfall development and software at Agile methodologies?
Michael (14:19)
So, what agile hardware product utilization does, and I I describe it in the book, is try and take the the most relevant aspects of agile software development, you know, iter iterative cycles and and good communication and and and take those principles and apply them in in a way that's strategic in the in the agile hardware world because physical products
Michael (14:48)
by the nature of how they're designed and and tested, at some point it it it gets very difficult to follow some of the agile software methodologies. So the idea is, especially early in development, how do you how do you leverage things like rapid prototyping and simulation tools and collaborative structures and market research and AI to to really wring the risk out of the product
Michael (15:15)
Until you get it to the point of what we call design freeze, and then once at a at design freeze, you really now have to go into a more waterfall sort of an arrangement. You've got components locked, you've got purchasing commitments, you've got contract manufacturers that need to know what they're building. So it's really to where it where it makes sense, apply those agile principles.
Michael (15:37)
to get better products developed more quickly and then be in a better better form so that when you do lock lock things in, it's not gonna take a lot more time and a lot more energy. So you're you're able to to go more smoothly and more quickly into volume production with without having to redo designs or redo regulatory testing or redo f procurement or or whatever the case may be. So so that's really the intent.
Wayne (16:07)
Yeah, in my experience, you know, just the fact that for products that you need to build, if there's tooling that's required, you know, there's a tooling cycle that's just gonna take time. You can't really do that in an agile way. You have to have a design that's
Wayne (16:23)
Baked before you release tooling. And then there's going to be a tooling cycle no matter what. And then the other part of it is you really need to, you know, build some quantity of units and go through a complete validation of those things to really learn enough to you know go to a higher volume. So to me, you know, I see you know that's got to be somewhat a waterfall approach. But then, you know, what I've also seen is, you know, the the agile approach where you have spring.
Wayne (16:53)
and you know more incremental development happening between those cycles. So it's kind of a hybrid.
Michael (16:59)
Yeah, and before you get to hard tooling, you can now leverage 3D printing and you can get those prototypes made quickly and and and efficiently without having to go through the expense of of hard tooling. So that that's that's the benefit of some of the recent hardware tools that are out there.
Wayne (17:17)
For sure. And and even on, you know, lower volume, really complicated products, you know, some of these technologies like metal 3D printing, you can actually use those in production, you know, and you can make parts that you can't even make any other way. So it's a really interesting time, with all the prototyping and manufacturing advancements that have come.
Michael (17:41)
For sure. And and I think if you layer AI on top of that, you could envision at some point in the future that maybe you never need to go to hard tooling and you could always leverage AI to make these things one off or or you do mass customization as needed.
Wayne (17:57)
For sure. Okay, so one other question that I have for you here is your book identifies ten practices for successful product realization. If a company could only focus on three, which would deliver the greatest impact?
Michael (18:13)
Yeah, that that's that's a great question. So my my my answer to that would be similar to y i if you had to build a house, what are the three elements of the house that you would want to use? Would it be the foundation or the or the drywall or the windows? So these practices really
Michael (18:36)
are holistic. So to say I'm gonna just employ hardware, agile hardware development or or or leverage simulation tools, and that's it. And I'm not gonna look at regulatory issues or product reliability or environmental compliance.
Michael (19:02)
applying DFX are are very imp very important if you're gonna prioritize. But I would argue that if you don't apply all these things in some fashion, you're gonna get bitten in the long run because all these things are needed to get a hardware product to the market. And the and the idea of sharing them is to really lay it on the table that people can see it and say, if I don't do these things
Michael (19:27)
there is a risk that I'm gonna fail regulatory compliance or I'm not gonna be able to buy parts or products are gonna fail on the field. And the whole intent is how do you avoid that? How do we help companies understand what they need to do so that they can avoid these risks.
Wayne (19:43)
For sure. Well, as as mostly a product development person, I kind of think that you know one of the most important things is to really make sure you know what you're designing and you're designing the right thing, you know, because if you
Wayne (19:58)
you can do all the, you know, kind of work to make sure that it's manufacturable and testable and cost effective, et cetera. But if you don't have a product that is differentiated and you know and great, you know, it's gonna be tough to have a great business. So to me that's a really important thing, you know. and I also think, you know, the planning for the whole development and
Wayne (20:25)
introduction is really critical because a lot of times people put a plan in place and then you know run out of time and they're not done with a big part of what needs to be done. And I think it's really important to make sure that everybody understands the expectations and if you're gonna you know have to cut things short you understand kind of what's missing you know from the beginning. So that's a key part. And then of course you want to partner with you if you're building it yourself you
Wayne (20:55)
to make sure that it's you you've got a good team to do it because you can really design a great product if you don't have anything in the back end it's gonna be all for naught and or or pick a really great supplier that can support you in that way.
Michael (21:12)
Yeah, just just to reinforce what you said there. I mean the two the two companies that I was actively working at in the Valley did not fail because we couldn't manufacture the products. They they had challenges because they got the wrong product market fit. So and I I I don't talk I mean the you the the intent of the book isn't it's it's assuming that you have product market fit figured out and you're really trying to figure out how to scale, but
Michael (21:39)
totally agree that if you don't have the right product and and you're not solving the right market need, then it doesn't matter how well you can make the product if you can't ship it for for a profit.
Wayne (21:53)
For sure. Okay, so let me come to another question here. So one of the central themes of the book is risk reduction. Why is reducing risk early the key to accelerating time to market?
Michael (22:09)
Well, if you look at companies that have struggled, I like if you look at one of the examples I share in the book is is Peloton. And during COVID they came out with a a treadmill and they didn't really do a lot of testing and then the tread treadmill failed and then they had to recall a bunch of units and that i not only eroded the brand and and got a lot of bad press, but it cost them
Michael (22:39)
several coup couple hundred million dollars in order to deal with that and and and fix these units. So if you don't understand and you don't address risk early, one way or another it's gonna come back to bite you and it's gonna cost you much, much more in the long run in order to fix that risk. It's it's still gonna be there. It's gonna end up as a field failure or a safety hazard.
Michael (23:04)
product that that doesn't ha live to the lifetime it's supposed to live. So the whole point of understanding risk and and mitigating it early is is really to prevent these very costly mistakes in hardware that that regularly we still see on a regular basis, you know, that that that are showing up. Think think of the GM cars that where the battery was blowing up or the Samsung phone.
Michael (23:31)
There's examples all over the place even today because companies even today are still rushing products out with without following these best practices and it's still visible today.
Wayne (23:44)
Yeah. What can you provide some examples of some of the you know ways to avoid risk? What are some of the things that you can do to avoid risk?
Michael (23:55)
Yeah, so the the the and and and I would I would add that risks are pretty easy to avoid if you know what you're getting into and then you do the right things at the right time to avoid the risk. So so when I was at my second startup we you know we we ha we had to do a design and we up applied
Michael (24:22)
A very rapid development cycle, and we we did a very short test, and then we ended up with a long functional test in the factory, and we ended up with a real challenge with extra field failures, that kind of thing. So the the way, and and I did recommend I I got overridden, but the way to avoid that is is very simple.
Michael (24:44)
apply in circuit test, design in the right test points to that product so that when it gets to the factory, you you can identify failures before they become failures in the field. If you don't have those test points and you haven't designed properly into the circuitry the ability to test,
Michael (25:01)
then when it gets to the factory, you you you don't have the ability to figure this stuff out before it hits field, and then when it hits field, you're gonna have higher field failure. So so it's really understand and I would say the same for regulatory, right? If you if you don't understand fully the regulatory landscape and then you you go into the market, maybe you'll have an FTE recall or you'll have a other recall. So so the trick is to to know what the risks are and then early on have plans to mitigate those risks.
Michael (25:31)
before you start ramping into volume. And again, I don't think it's rocket science. I think it's applied common sense, which which I like to think the book is. It's a lot of just applied common sense that I've learned over the years and other people have shared their knowledge over the years to try and help companies understand and and and mitigate these risks before they really become escalatory problems that that that cause business business issues and customer issues.
Wayne (25:59)
Yeah, one of my views is, you know, the the quality of the people who are
Wayne (26:04)
doing product validation or or assessing risk and things like that is a really key part of it. Lots of times, especially in the startup world, a lot of companies put all their focus on, you know, the engineering product development talent. And you know, it's really important to make sure that you have, you know, good, strong talent in, you know, kind of the risk assessment and product validation and regulatory side of things.
Wayne (26:34)
You know, one of the things that I think we've been able to help a lot of companies with is just putting together proper validation plans, DFMEAs, all that kind of stuff. And I think it's really helped a lot of companies come out the other end more successfully.
Michael (26:50)
Yeah, absolutely. It's that it's the whole idea of plan do act, right? I mean if you if you have a good plan and you understand what these things are and then you can can simulate and reduce then then when you when you actually make that transition into volume, you just you just have less less less risk and less issues you know scaling the business.
Wayne (27:12)
Many companies struggle when moving from prototype to production. What are the most common mistakes you see during manufacturing scale-up?
Michael (27:22)
Yeah, so I I I was digging back through my my eight years running at contract manufacturer and I saw all sorts of things. I I think the most kind of the biggest thing that hit me in that operational role was companies h had a mindset that if whatever the problems that they had in development, somehow if they threw it over the fence to manufacturing, manufacturing would figure it all out.
Michael (27:51)
And it just didn't work that way, right? So then when we would try and manufacture products we would end up with low yields because of marginal designs or
Michael (28:02)
layout issues where you couldn't manufacture the the the complex printed cigarette boards because the layouts were such that you know you'd have shorts or opens or or other mechanical problems or parts were designed in that w that had really long lead times and then you couldn't build the product because you couldn't buy the parts. So I I I don't know if
Michael (28:23)
If one pr in particular stood out, but I would say the general idea of companies kind of thinking they can throw it over the wall and manufacturing is going to fix it fix it, I think was probably the biggest the biggest thing that I I experienced. And then whatever the issue was, as a manufacturer, you y you have to then present it back to the customer and say, hey, this is a design issue, you've gotta you've actually gotta fix it on your side because I don't own the design. I'm just trying to build it.
Wayne (28:50)
Yeah. One of the things that I've seen, especially in the startup world, is a lot of companies think their prototype and their production design is the same. And they try to they try to ramp their prototype. And you know, man, that could be painful.
Michael (29:01)
Ha ha.
Michael (29:04)
Yeah.
Michael (29:06)
Yeah, I can so which I mean that's a great point to bring up, which is it's often easy to get one or two parts from almost anybody. You know, they'll give you a sample or whatever. But if you're if you're trying to scale you you you really need to do your homework and make sure whatever parts are going into the product are gonna be available and and and available at a reasonable cost and the right quality level and everything else. And yeah, if you're just kinda willy-nilly taking samples.
Michael (29:35)
that are relatively easy to get and thinking you're gonna scale those that that that that I've never seen that work.
Wayne (29:41)
Well and if you look at a lot of the
Wayne (29:44)
companies that are out there today, you know, all these robotic companies, drone companies, et cetera, you've got these relatively complex systems and moving parts. And you know, people feel great when they have their prototype flying or doing something like a robot, et cetera. But there's a big difference between like a demo kind of prototype that can do something and a product that's ready to be scaled. So it's really important to understand the difference and to plan for you know
Wayne (30:14)
Well be ready for it.
Michael (30:17)
Absolutely. Yeah. And that and that's where things like phase gate and and design release checklists and getting collaborative teams working early and and getting inputs from manufacturers early can really be helpful. And that and that all all the all those are are you know are are are in the book.
Wayne (30:38)
Cool. So how is artificial intelligence changing product development, manufacturing, supply chain management, and project execution today?
Michael (30:50)
Yeah, as I dug into the AI piece of this, it really kind of blew my mind how rapidly AI is coming into the into the product development world. And it's it it's only been a few years really since AI has has come onto the scene and it's it's impacting on the marketing side, market research. I i i if you think about it, anything that an LLM can help with, it's gonna have some level of
Michael (31:16)
you know, of impact. So you know, market analysis is a really good example. failure analysis, if assuming you have access to large sets of data where products are are shipping and you can dig into the field failure data. product design I would say is a little bit slower because a lot of product design is still there's not a lot of LLM information. So I I'm not saying it's can't be used in simulation of things, but I would say that's a
Michael (31:45)
You know, that's an element that's going a little bit slower than some of the other things that are that are just where data is already available and tools can be used. the other thing that is coming on very quickly is agent you know, agents and how are agents deployed to to help solve problems and and do tasks that you know weren't weren't so easy to automate or would it would or or w
Michael (32:09)
We're not automated. So I I think there's gonna be a lot of automation. and the and the way I think about AI right now, it may change and and really become ubiquitous, is it it's a little pieces of glue that help integrate and speed up the whole product development process if if it's used appropriately under the right kind of guidance. And I think it's only gonna get more and more powerful o over time where I I could envision at some point in the future where
Michael (32:36)
AI could do nuts to bolts. You know, you have an idea and you could vibe quote a hardware product. I I don't think we're there yet, but I could envision at some point we could get there.
Wayne (32:45)
Well, I know that I've, you know, utilized AI tools for product development and you know, it definitely isn't something that
Wayne (32:56)
you can use to define a product and have it come out the other end. But I do think that it accelerates, you know, kind of the concept development and any detail work. And if you use it appropriately and you, you know, take it in bite-sized chunks and and use things, you can get ideas and then do the work, you know. So I don't think you can avoid the work, but it just helps speed it up, in my view. And you know, and and you can also check your work that way. You know, a lot of
Wayne (33:26)
People who are doing product development and engineering don't have time to do what they need to do. And if you can, you know, use some of the artificial intelligence tools to, you know.
Wayne (33:39)
just test or validate or you know you can analyze certain things. it can be quite helpful just to kind of give you confidence and you're really doing it where before you probably didn't have time to do it. So it's additive, you know, which I think is super helpful.
Michael (33:58)
Totally. Yeah. And and I I do think it's gonna it's gonna it's gonna creep and you know it's it's in these different selective L LLM areas now, but I I think as it gets better at different development activities that you we're gonna find over time it's gonna get stronger and stronger on on being able to to take bigger bigger and bigger chunks in the development process and and even in the supply chain process.
Wayne (34:24)
For sure. Okay. Well, here's my last question today. So if you could give one piece of advice to founders, product managers, and engineering leaders trying to bring a new hardware product to market, what would it be?
Michael (34:39)
Yeah, that's a great question. So I I think you said it earlier and I'll repeat it because I really agree with it, and that is it's it's making sure that whatever you're developing is solving a real market need and and you and you understand the market need to to the point where whatever product you're developing solves the sol really does a good job of solving the market need and you can make a viable
Michael (35:09)
competitive business over time with it and and have a competitive advantage. And I think the biggest issues I've seen with with all the companies I work with and been at is they just don't understand the market side. You know, they understand the technology great and it's cool technology and it's gonna sell itself, but they just don't understand somebody needs to buy it. You need to be able to make money. You need to be able to have a happy customer
Michael (35:36)
And and that's really the the problem to solve and then the t the technology is just there to enable that, really. and and I'll I'll I'll leave it there, but that's that's that's my two cents and it's not so much related to developing a product, but it's it's making sure that you're you've got the right product that you're developing before you actually go into development and if
Michael (36:01)
If you put all that time and energy and you follow the book and you and you do a great job, but you have the wrong product coming out the other side, it's not it's not gonna be a very good out outcome for your business.
Wayne (36:11)
For sure. Well, you know
Wayne (36:13)
Michael, thank you so much for going through and sharing all your insights from your new book. I'm really excited. I'm proud to be kind of a reviewer of it and had several conversations with you about it. You know, I think the key takeaway from today's discussion is that successful hardware products require much more than great engineering. They really require a disciplined approach to risk reduction, product management, manufacturing readiness, supply chain resilience, and continuous learning. And, you know, for anyone involved in product development,
Wayne (36:43)
operations, manufacturing, supply chain management, or technology leadership. I think Agile Hardware Product Realization offers a practical roadmap for turning great ideas into six old products. So Michael, congratulations on the release of version 3.0 and thanks so much for joining us today.
Michael (37:03)
Thank you so much, Wayne. Appreciate the time.
Wayne (37:06)
Alright. Thank you so much, everybody. Till next time.